


Day 6: movie parody

by readbetweenthelions



Series: Kurotsukki Week [6]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fight Club - Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 13:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2026809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readbetweenthelions/pseuds/readbetweenthelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fight club is in my top 3 movies of all time and i've talked about doing a fight club au for so many different pairings over the years that i've lost count, but i never thought i had the fortitude or skill for it. well, here it is, finally. it ended up being more heavily influenced by the book than the movie but that's a moot point, isn't it? i suggest you read the book or watch the movie before you read this otherwise you risk spoiling the source material for yourself (which, the movie's been out for fifteen years, you've had some time on that one) but it's a personal favorite so i highly suggest it if you havent read/watched it. sorry yamaguchi is pretty out of character. there's just not anyone who would fill the role of marla better. please forgive me for this, kindly deposit me in the trash where i belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 6: movie parody

Tsukishima tongues the barrel of the gun in his mouth so that it rests against his cheek, the metal hard between his teeth but no longer cold.

“Five minutes,” Kuroo says.

That’s how long they have until the building they’re standing in no longer exists. It’s part of Kuroo’s plan, of course. Kuroo always has a plan, and they’re closer than anyone, but that doesn’t mean Tsukishima is always in on or even aware of Kuroo’s plans.

“We won’t really die, you know,” Kuroo says. His fingers adjust themselves, one by one, for a better grip on the gun. “We’ll be legends. Legends don’t die.”

You take a ninety-eight percent solution of nitric acid and add it to three times the amount of sulfuric acid. Over ice. You add glycerin, slowly. It makes nitroglycerin, this procedure. Add it to sawdust for a plastic explosive.

That old saying, how you always kill the one you love – it works both ways.

“It’s our world now,” Kuroo says.

The city sparkles below, lights in the darkness and headlights streaming along the streets like blood pumping through veins. On a regular night, it might be beautiful. But right now, Tsukishima can only think about where the gun in his mouth has been.

He thinks he should probably think about something other than Yamaguchi, at this point, the last few minutes before he snuffs it should be filled with some more existential angst, or something, probably. But ultimately, it goes back to him. It’s almost a triangle. Yamaguchi wants Tsukishima, Tsukishima wants Kuroo, Kuroo wants whatever Tsukishima doesn’t want and that’s Yamaguchi. It’s funny how it was supposed to be them, just Kuroo and Tsukishima, but they wouldn’t have even been anything at all without Yamaguchi.

The thing about legends is that someone has to be able to tell the story.

Wait, Kuroo.

“Four minutes.”

Tsukishima remembers it all.

***

Tsukishima is at a support group for men with testicular cancer. He’s wrapped in the vice-like grip of Asahi, a man twice Tsukishima’s size in width.

For weeks, maybe months, Tsukishima hasn’t slept. More accurately, he’s _slept_ , but not much. The insomnia is always dragging, dragging, dragging at him, slowing his thoughts to a standstill during the day out of sheer exhaustion but never letting him drift to sleep when he finally lays his head down. Insomnia puts everything at a far, far distance. The raw human pain of others, the pain of these people who are dying – it’s the only thing that can reach him through that haze.

“You cry now,” Asahi says. Rough hands pull Tsukishima’s face into Asahi’s chest.

Every Friday night for months, Tsukishima comes here. He doesn’t have testicular cancer. He’s a faker. He comes to these meetings for one reason, and it’s not because he’s had his balls removed. He comes here, and he cries into Asahi’s meaty chest, and he loses control. He loses all hope, staring death and complete failure and the idea of never leaving a mark on the world in the face, looking through the eyes of these people who are dying and who have no hope left at all. He loses hope, and he cries. This shit helps him sleep at night.

This time is different.

It’s because of Yamaguchi Tadashi.

He’s a faker.

Tsukishima has seen him at other support groups. Tsukishima goes to more than just this one. Testicular cancer is his favorite, but he needs to sleep the other nights of the week, too. Tsukishima has seen Yamaguchi Tadashi at his brain parasites group on Wednesday night, at lung cancer on Saturday, where Yamaguchi’s chain smoking hadn’t gone over well. He’s a fake. A liar. Yamaguchi Tadashi is a liar and Tsukishima simply cannot cry when he’s present. His lie reflects Tsukishima’s lie. This part, squeezed tight to Asahi’s oversized pecs, swollen like breasts from the testosterone therapy he’s been on, should be the best part. Tsukishima should cry, and then he should go home and sleep like a baby, but he can’t lose control with Yamaguchi present.

Yamaguchi Tadashi.

***

You wake up at Tokyo International.

The thought of a plane crash sends him straight to sleep on every flight. It’s the same loss of control as the support groups. The plane might bank too sharp and something might break, and the plane goes down in flames. A flock of geese in the engine, turbulence so severe it rips the wings apart, a mid-air collision. Whatever happens, Tsukishima has no control at all. Tsukishima sleeps through every one of the considerable number of flights he takes.

You wake up at Kansai.

You wake up at Sendai.

These people on planes, well, you see them once for a few hours, and then they flit out of your life and you never see them again. You chat and make nice and tell them about your job and your apartment and your shitty hobbies, and they tell you about theirs, and then they disappear forever. Single-serving friends.

This is how Tsukishima meets Kuroo Tetsurou.

You wake up at Hiroshima.

Kuroo works as a projectionist. One of his many jobs. It’s a night job, not a day job. He sits in the back of the theater with the projection equipment and the rolls of film. He has to switch them over, the rolls of film, in the middle of the movie. A movie comes on several rolls of film, not just one. You have to switch between the projector showing the first reel and the one that will show the second one at just the right moment, so the movie goes on and no one is the wiser. It’s precise timing for ten seconds, with big long stretches of nothing in between. Quite the job, Kuroo says.

You wake up at Osaka.

As a hobby, Kuroo takes single frames of rolls of film filled with pornography. Slices them neatly out and mends the film back together. No one misses a single frame. Until, he says, you get a bunch of guys doing the same thing. Whole scenes go missing, eventually. It’s common enough, in the business. Some guys have huge collections, he tells Tsukishima. Kuroo doesn’t bother collecting. He likes to splice them into other films. Romantic comedies, children’s cartoons, this year’s big action film. A single frame isn’t that noticeable. It might be that no one notices. But they saw it. They might not know it, but these people, these moviegoers in the theaters Kuroo works at, they’ve seen Kuroo’s handiwork whether they know it or not.

That trick, where you switch between the projectors, it’s called a changeover.

You wake up at Miyazaki. You wake up at Narita.

The plane lands with a bump on the runway, the metal potential death trap shuddering as it touches down, hundreds of miles per hour worth of momentum coming up against immovable asphalt. The plane could crash now easier than any other time. It might be just a little tip, and the plane would roll, wings ripping off and fire bursting to life and roasting them all in their seats, even with their destination within walking distance.

You wake up at Tokyo, again.

When he’s not splicing porn into kids’ movies, Kuroo makes soap. He gives Tsukishima his card. Kuroo Tetsurou, Paper Street Soaps. There’s a phone number at the bottom. That’s how Tsukishima meets Kuroo, like he’s a single-serving friend on the millionth flight Tsukishima has taken this month.

You wake up at Nagasaki.

If you can wake up in a different place, at a different time, couldn’t you wake up as a different person, too?

***

“You can’t go up,” the doorman says.

There are possessions that look strikingly like Tsukishima’s scattered on the concrete in front of the high-rise apartment building Tsukishima lives in. They’re smoldering, these things. Furniture Tsukishima remembers purchasing, remembers picking very carefully out of catalogues and assembling with cheap screwdrivers included in the packaging.

What Tsukishima has now is nothing. Not even what was in his suitcase. Three ties, one red and one blue and one dark blue with thin white stripes. Two pairs of black slacks. Two neatly folded white shirts. Underwear for four days. Shaving gel, electric razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste. Phone charger. His suitcase had been removed from the flight because of that electric razor. Airlines have a policy about vibrating luggage. Bombs don’t tick anymore. They’re more likely to vibrate. It’s a slim chance to catch something like that, but they have the policy anyway. When they catch things, it’s usually an electric razor like Tsukishima’s, switching on inside the bag and giving that buzzing sound that got it yanked off the flight. The man behind the counter when he goes to fetch his bag explains all of this. Usually it’s an electric razor or something. But sometimes, it’s a dildo.

These things happen.

His apartment has been destroyed, an isolated explosion, caused by a bomb that his electric razor certainly hadn’t been, contained by the thick concrete walls of the apartment building. No one else’s apartment had been affected. Tsukishima’s insurance will cover it, probably. But he’s got his wallet and his carry-on with his jacket and his paperback and he’s also got no one to call.

Except for that number on the card in his pocket.

Tsukishima calls Kuroo.

They meet at a bar, one not far from Tsukishima’s former apartment, former in the sense that it’s no longer an apartment, not that it’s no longer Tsukishima’s. All those burning possessions, it’s all just stuff. That’s what Kuroo tells him, near the bottom of the pitcher of beer they’ve been sharing between them. Just symbols of capitalism, of the culture of greed.

“Just ask,” Kuroo says. They’re out back of the bar, a cigarette hanging from Kuroo’s lips.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Tsukishima replies.

“You called me because you need a place to stay. Just – ask.”

Tsukishima regards him for a moment. Kuroo takes a drag on his cigarette with his fingers against his lips to steady it. “Can I stay at your place?”

“Yeah.” A grin breaks out on Kuroo’s face, the cigarette held between his teeth. “I need you to do me a favor, though.”

Tsukishima, stupid as he is, stupid but grateful for Kuroo, says, “Anything.”

That’s what he says. Anything. Anything for you, Kuroo, my savior. Anything.

“Hit me,” Kuroo says.

“What?” Tsukishima says. He feels the expression on his face, confused and, he knows, a little scared.

“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Why? Tsukishima asks. “Why?”

“Never been in a fight,” Kuroo shrugs. “You?”

“No, of course not,” Tsukishima says.

Kuroo blows smoke towards the neon sign that lights up the alley they stand in, pink and green tinging both of their faces and the white smoke from Kuroo’s lips. “A first for both of us, then.”

“I don’t know how,” Tsukishima says. He clenches his fists anyway. Kuroo’s request. “I don’t know _where_.”

“Wherever,” Kuroo says. “However. Surprise me.”

Tsukishima’s right hook connects with Kuroo’s cheek. Tsukishima has never hit anyone before, doesn’t know what his own strength would be, doesn’t know how much it would hurt Kuroo. The hit sends Kuroo reeling, makes him stumble a step or two to the left, away from the impact. “Shit, Kuroo, are you okay?”

Kuroo lifts his face to look Tsukishima directly in the eye. “ _Fantastic_ ,” he says. His knuckles slam hard into Tsukishima’s face.

Tsukishima reels at least as hard as Kuroo had. When he looks up at Kuroo, Kuroo grins and says, “Cool.”

Their first fight.

Seems an auspicious way to begin a relationship, if that’s the word for what they had.

***

Tsukishima swallows blood from a cheek that’s split on the inside. Stuff like that doesn’t scab over easy, when you keep licking at it, when your teeth keep rubbing it. The stitches have come out, and it’s bleeding again, the salt and metal tang of blood filling his mouth.

You can swallow about a pint of blood before you get sick.

Fight club is tomorrow night. Whatever the state of his cheek, and the other injuries, Tsukishima won’t miss fight club.

The injuries, you tell people all sorts of stuff to play them off. I fell down some stairs. I got hit with a door. I play volleyball and you get hurt sometimes, and you laugh, and you say _you know how it is_. Anything but the truth.

The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

Tsukishima doesn’t want to die without any scars. Live while you’re young, and all that. Make a mark. Make a mark, even if it’s your own skin you’re marking, skin that’s going to decay and fall away forever after you’re dead and in the ground.

The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

Fight club doesn’t exist outside of those hours, those times spent with the hot, humid air of other men’s breath and the salt sweat of their bodies and the droning of their shouts. The pain of your body where you’d taken hits.

You see people. You see them everywhere, once you know. A waiter with two black eyes and a broken nose so bad it had to be fixed surgically. The kid at work who can’t remember whether you said you wanted color on your printouts or not, sporting a split lip and a collage of bruises from his face to his neck and down under his shirt where you can’t see. You don’t say anything to these people. You don’t talk about it. They can see your bruises too, and it’s enough that you both know. You’re different people out here, anyways.

Only two guys to a fight. Only one fight at a time. No shirt, no shoes. Fights go on as long as they have to. The other rules of fight club.

You’re a different person in the real world than you are there, in the dark spaces when normal people sleep but you and these people gathered together putting fists and feet and elbows and knees into each other’s bodies, drawing blood and leaving contusions and cracked bones. It’s destruction. Self-destruction. But that’s the point.

If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

Kuroo and Tsukishima still go to fight club, together. Now it’s in the basement of this one bar, held after closing time. Kuroo stands in the middle of the room under the one light and repeats the rules they decided on together.

Last week, Tsukishima had his head slammed into the concrete over and over by a guy who had sat on his back and held him down while he did it, until his teeth gored his cheek and opened that wound he’s still swallowing blood from. It was a miracle he hadn’t lost any teeth this time. Not that he cared.

Kuroo had picked him up off the ground and shown him the mark the blood had made on the floor and said, “Cool.”

You’re not alive anywhere like you are at fight club. It’s pure, undiluted. It’s not watching some sport on TV where people you don’t know halfway around the world beat the shit out of each other for millions of dollars each year. Fight club makes guys go to the gym, makes them cut their hair or cut their fingernails, keep themselves in order. It’s not aesthetic. It’s just to keep up. Fight club isn’t even about winning fights. It’s not about losing them either. It’s about losing control, whatever that means.

The hospital, where the stitches in Tsukishima’s cheek had been put in, Kuroo tells them he fell. He did this to himself. Kuroo speaks for Tsukishima like that sometimes.

Their first fight, that first night, Tsukishima hadn’t felt like he was fighting Kuroo. He’d been fighting everything he couldn’t fight in his life, all the girls and accomplishments that had gotten away, volleyball games in high school that ended too soon, all his shirts that came back from the cleaners with the buttons having fallen off, all the times his boss told him to tighten his tie or to work faster, and Yamaguchi Tadashi who had ruined the support groups forever.

You go into fight club scared. Everyone does. But after a few nights, you aren’t afraid anymore. And not just in fight club, where the guys you fight are stand-ins for your problems in the real world. Suddenly you aren’t afraid of the real world anymore. Because it can’t fuck you up any worse than fight club does.

***

Tsukishima wakes up one morning, and there’s a used condom in the toilet.

It’s a hell of a way to wake up. Normally, Tsukishima wouldn’t care. Kuroo can fuck whoever he wants. But this isn’t just “whoever.”

It’s Yamaguchi.

All night, Tsukishima had dreamed he was fucking Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi biting his lip. Yamaguchi looking off somewhere else while they do it. Tsukishima wakes up in his bed alone. Kuroo’s door is closed.

Kuroo’s door is never closed.

The shitty, run-down house on Paper Street that Kuroo lives in, the one Tsukishima lives in with him – it rains, and everything swells and leaks and molds. They have to cut the power. Rainwater leaks through the wiring, through the light sockets and everywhere else. There’s huge stacks of magazines everywhere, warping with the water every time they get soaked in the rain and dry again when it stops. The place is in the middle of nowhere in the industrial district, near a paper plant and dozens of nearly-empty warehouses. Tsukishima asked Kuroo how long he’s been living here, back when he’d first moved in, and Kuroo had said six weeks. It’s been a month since then.

It’s been a month, and Kuroo’s door is never closed.

Kuroo comes to breakfast, skin covered in hickeys, wearing that disgusting robe he wears around the house twenty-four seven. Tsukishima is reading some magazine from one of the numerous piles, examining a column that’s written from the perspective of some guy’s liver.

And Kuroo comes in, with his hickeys and says something, blah blah blah, he met Yamaguchi Tadashi last night and they had sex.

Tsukishima feels like Joe’s Gallbladder. Full of bile, so much it wells up.

He’d called Yamaguchi last night. They had a system, so that they avoided each other at the support groups. Tsukishima had been feeling down, figured he’d stop by Leukemia, for a pick-me-up. Yamaguchi lives in this shitty hotel, the kind of place people go to die, literally – all the mattresses are sealed in plastic, so if someone dies on the bed and all those fluids leak out it doesn’t ruin the mattress. Tsukishima calls to ask if Yamaguchi is going to Leukemia, and Yamaguchi answers the phone like he’s talking through water, in slow motion. He’d taken a bunch of Xanax, he says. If he falls asleep, he’s done for. This isn’t a for real suicide thing, though. Probably just a cry for attention. That’s what he says. Tsukishima imagines going to the hotel and watching Yamaguchi mope pitifully around his shitty room, moaning about how he’s dying, dying, d y i n g. It could go on for hours.

So he wasn’t going to Leukemia then, right?

Tsukishima had gone to Leukemia. He came home. He slept. He slept and dreamed he was fucking, fucking, fucking Yamaguchi.

He’s fucked up, that one, Kuroo tells him. The shit he heard out of Yamaguchi’s mouth – no one’s ever talked to him that way.

Tsukishima is Joe’s Clenched Fists. He is Joe’s Raging Bile Duct.

They had sex about ten times, Kuroo says. Yamaguchi said he wished he could get pregnant, so he could have Kuroo’s abortion.

That’s so fucked up, Kuroo couldn’t _not_ go for that. He’s the guy splicing frames of pornography into kids’ movies, for God’s sake. There’s no way Tsukishima can compete for Kuroo’s attention with Yamaguchi.

Tsukishima is Joe’s Burning Jealousy.

The worst part is, it’s Tsukishima’s fault. Kuroo tells him how after he came home from his shift as a waiter, yet another of his many jobs, Yamaguchi called from the hotel. Talked about how this was it, the end, he can’t go on anymore, he’s dying dying dying.

Kuroo answers the phone and misunderstands the situation. He calls the police. Rushes over to the hotel.

If Tsukishima had just wasted a few minutes of his life and gone to watch Yamaguchi die, none of this would have happened at all.

Tsukishima can just hear it, as clear as if it was his own memory. Yamaguchi saying he needs to be kept up all night. Kuroo fucking Yamaguchi all night, to save his life. When Kuroo woke up, Yamaguchi was gone, back to the hotel.

Yamaguchi doesn’t need a lover, Tsukishima says to Kuroo. He needs a fucking psychiatrist.

“Don’t call it love,” Kuroo says.

It’s happening again. Yamaguchi Tadashi, ruining his life.

Kuroo asks if this is going to be a problem for him.

Tsukishima is Joe’s Boiling Rage.

No, he says. It’s not going to be a problem.

Tsukishima would rather die.

Not a problem at all, he says.

***

Tsukishima gets home from work, and Kuroo and Yamaguchi are at it again. Fucking in Kuroo’s room so loud it echoes through the house, gets the chandeliers in the place shaking. Tsukishima had been sent home to wash the blood out of his clothes. Tsukishima doesn’t care about stuff like that anymore. Everything is coming apart, so he should probably let it. He’s very _zen_ about the whole thing.

Except when they’re fucking – which is all the time – Kuroo and Yamaguchi are never seen together.

There’s no soap in the house, of course. Kuroo has to show Tsukishima how to make it. But he’s upstairs, humping Yamaguchi, again. For the billionth time.

One minute, Yamaguchi is sitting there, saying something about how we’re all dying, we should embrace it.

The next, Yamaguchi is nowhere to be found. “I could get you a job at the hotel, waiting tables,” Kuroo says. To replace the desk job. “They let you work evenings. All you need is a white shirt and black pants.”

Soap, Kuroo, soap, Tsukishima reminds him.

“First, we have to render fat,” Kuroo says.

Kuroo is full of useful information.

“Send Yamaguchi to the store. Tell him to get a can of lye. The flake kind, not crystals. Get rid of him.”

“You get rid of him!” Tsukishima says. Yamaguchi should be Kuroo’s problem. But he’s always been Tsukishima’s problem.

When Yamaguchi is gone, Tsukishima and Kuroo boil fat in a big pot of water on the stove, thick white stuff squeezed from bags Kuroo had kept in the freezer. The fat renders, the tallow floats to the top of the pot. Skim the shiny layer off the top after it’s rendered. Save it for later.

“Say what you will,” Kuroo says. “At least Yamaguchi is _trying_ to hit bottom.”

“Oh, and I’m not?” Tsukishima says.

“No.”

Tsukishima stirs the boiling fat, skims tallow from the top.

“Where you are now, you can’t imagine what the bottom is like.”

When Yamaguchi returns with the lye, Kuroo disappears. Upstairs, maybe, or down in the basement. Not around. Never around when Yamaguchi is. Yamaguchi asks what Tsukishima is doing.

“Get out,” Tsukishima says. “Go, just get out. Don’t you have a big enough hold on my life already?”

Yamaguchi kisses Tsukishima’s cheek. “Call me soon,” he says. “We need to talk.”

Yeah, Tsukishima says. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

The instant Yamaguchi is gone, Kuroo reappears. The two of them, they’re still boiling fat. Boil it, skim the tallow from the top. Store it in open containers. Tsukishima fills empty milk cartons with the stuff, and Kuroo stuffs them in the fridge.

“Don’t ever talk to Yamaguchi about me,” Kuroo says. “Don’t talk about me behind my back. You promise?”

Tsukishima promises.

“You’ll never see me again if you talk to him about me,” Kuroo says.

Tsukishima promises.

“Promise?”

Tsukishima promises.

Kuroo says, “That was three times you promised.”

The tallow in the containers is separating. Tsukishima asks about it.

“Don’t worry,” Kuroo says. “The clear part is glycerin. You can mix it in when you make the soap.”

He licks his lips. He holds Tsukishima’s hand palm-down on the table.

“Or you can save it,” he says. “And add nitric acid, to make nitroglycerin.”

Nitroglycerin, Tsukishima repeats.

Kuroo’s lips are shining wet with saliva and he presses a kiss to the back of Tsukishima’s hand.

“Mix it with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite. You could blow up pretty much anything.”

Kuroo pries the lid off the can of lye.

“A building, easy.”

The can of lye hangs in the air over Tsukishima’s wet hand.

“This is a chemical burn,” Kuroo says. “It’s going to hurt worse than you’ve ever been burned, and you’ll have a scar.”

Kuroo tips the can over and pours the lye.

The wetness of Kuroo’s saliva holds the lye to his skin. And lye only burns when you get it wet.

They use this stuff to unclog drains. You can dissolve a wooden spoon in it. It burns hotter than two hundred degrees, mixed with water or saliva, and Kuroo holds Tsukishima’s hand still with his fingers on Tsukishima’s. He tells Tsukishima to pay attention to the greatest moment of his life.

The present. He means this moment, with Tsukishima’s hand burning and the pain searing, everything before the moment and after the moment is a story, a fiction, a might-have-happened or a maybe. Kuroo tells Tsukishima not to go off somewhere and miss it. Focus on this, on your burning hand. Focus on the pain. Look at your hand.

“Every tear you cry is going to land on that hand and it’s only going to burn worse,” Kuroo says.

Please, Tsukishima says.

“We can use vinegar, and neutralize the burn,” Kuroo says. It’s almost conversational. “But first, you have to hit bottom.”

Tsukishima gives up, tries not to struggle against Kuroo’s hold anymore. He looks at his hand. He feels the pain. The smell of lye burns in his nostrils. Then the smell of vinegar, and the burning fades away.

A scorching red burn in the perfect shape of Kuroo’s lips is left on the back of his hand.

“Congratulations,” Kuroo says. “You’re one step closer to hitting bottom.”

***

Tsukishima’s boss is standing in front of him, holding a piece of paper. It’s not unusual. He always comes in here, asks Tsukishima to do some task.

“Is this yours?” he says.

Is what his?

It was left in the copy machine, his boss says. “The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

He laughs.

“The second rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

Kuroo asked Tsukishima to type up the rules. Get them printed off, ten copies. Tsukishima hasn’t slept. He must have left the original in the copy maker. That’s how it is with insomnia. It’s all far away, everything a copy of a copy of a copy.

“The third rule of fight club is two men per fight.”

Tsukishima and his boss do not blink.

“One fight at a time.”

Tsukishima’s boss yells about how Tsukishima shouldn’t do this on company time. Does he think this is some kind of joke? What would Tsukishima do, if he were in this position?

What Tsukishima would do, he says, is be very careful about who he talked to about that paper. The person who wrote that is dangerous. Someday he might snap, come in here with a revolver with makeshift silencer holes drilled into it, shooting each and every one of those cubicle-bound coworkers of his.

“Go ahead,” Tsukishima says. “Read the rest.”

Tsukishima finishes it for him.

The fourth rule is one fight at a time.

The fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts.

Maybe this person would use a shotgun instead, completely blow everyone away. Friends, coworkers, his boss. This could be a person you’ve known for years.

Everything is suddenly very boring.

Tsukishima snatches the paper from his boss. “It’s not mine. Maybe you shouldn’t bring me every piece of trash you pick up.”

He throws the balled up rules in the garbage can.

***

Tsukishima takes a trip to the testicular cancer group. It used to be his favorite, though he’s mostly stopped going.

Asahi is happy to see him. He thought Tsukishima was dead. That’s what it meant when someone stopped showing up. There’s no one here now. Just Asahi. Where is everyone, Tsukishima asks.

“Disbanded. There’s something better now,” Asahi says. “Only, the first rule is you’re not supposed to talk about it.”

“And the second rule is, you’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Shit. Fuck.

“Do you know Kuroo Tetsurou?”

Tsukishima says he doesn’t know. Maybe.

***

Tsukishima is sitting in his boss’ office. He’s making threats. Saying how everyone is going to know about the way this company does things. All the dangerous things they could have recalled, but didn’t. For the sake of the bottom line.

All you have to do, he says, is keep paying me my salary, keep paying for my flights, and no one will ever know the things I know.

“You’re crazy,” his boss says.

“No,” Tsukishima says. “I think I’m pretty sane, in the scheme of things.”

His boss tells him that will never happen. Tsukishima knows other ways to get things. When he hits himself, full in the face, it’s worth it for the shock on his boss’s face. Tsukishima plays it up, yelling for his boss to stop, please, don’t hit me anymore, while Tsukishima slams fist after fist into his face and body and Tsukishima’s boss is terrified and there’s broken things from Tsukishima throwing himself around and it’s really a beautiful, beautiful image.

When security shows up, it’s at the moment Tsukishima is gripping his boss’s wrist and spraying blood on his boss’s khakis and saying please, please, don’t hit me again. For all the world it looks as if his boss had done this, never that Tsukishima had done it to himself. Tsukishima hadn’t even really done it. It was all Kuroo’s words, coming out of his mouth.

***

Someone broke into an office building downtown, set strategic offices on fire to make it look like a big, grinning, burning face. It’s in all the papers.

Who would do this?

What did it mean?

Was it Project Mayhem?

Was it the Mischeif Committee? Or Arson? Some homework Kuroo had assigned them last week. The Assault Committee, each of them were told to buy a gun.

Project Mayhem. Kuroo’s idea. A natural extension of fight club, he says.

Two weeks ago, Tsukishima had gotten a new kid for his fight. A tiny kid with a cute face under a mop of red hair. Tsukishima hadn’t been sleeping. Insomnia is dragging at him again, always dragging. He feels like destroying something beautiful. Tsukishima slams his face into the concrete so hard, there’s nothing left. He hits long past when the kid goes limp. That’s against the rules, but fuck it. Tsukishima had invented those rules. Him and Kuroo.

Kuroo says afterwards that’s the first time he’s ever seen Tsukishima do something that completely. That earnestly. That now he’s really _trying_. To hit bottom, he means.

The Assault Committee, they were told not to buy bullets.

Project Mayhem. You don’t ask questions. Don’t ask questions. No excuses. No lies.

And you have to trust Kuroo.

***

People move into the house on Paper Street.

At first, it’s one guy, standing on the porch in plain black clothes. Just standing. Kuroo says to get rid of him. He’s too young to train here.

How young is too young?

Kuroo says, “Just get rid of him.”

Tsukishima does his best, asks him to leave, then shouts at him, threatens him, physically hits him. The guy doesn’t go away. He takes it from Kuroo, too, this guy standing on their porch. Three days later, he hasn’t moved. On the third day, Kuroo tells him to come in.

Now, when Tsukishima comes home from work, the house is buzzing with people. So many that it feels suffocating, all those guys sweating and breathing and working in there. Making soap. Paper Street Soap Company, come to life. Guys he recognizes from fight club, guys he doesn’t. Even the red-haired kid whose face Tsukishima destroyed. They’re all in this house he was supposed to share with Kuroo, busying themselves with soap-making between their mischief and mayhem, assigned to them by Kuroo Tetsurou.

Asahi is there. He makes soap, with the rest of them. Shaves his head, with the rest of them. Tsukishima asks what Kuroo promised him, if he did this. Enlightenment? Asahi doesn’t say anything.

Yamaguchi visits. They stroll through the garden the Project Mayhem guys planted. Herbs and flowers, for the soap. Yamaguchi talks about them, each herb he knows. What they do. He visits now and then. When one of the guys, Shaved Head Number Three-hundred-whatever, tells Yamaguchi he’s too young to train here, Yamaguchi yells for Kuroo.

Kuroo doesn’t come.

The men in the house, they spit Kuroo’s rhetoric everywhere. We aren’t special. We are tools. The body’s blood. We are all the same, and we are all garbage. We can only give up, and surrender to something other than ourselves. Kuroo himself is nowhere to be found. Tsukishima feels just as dumped as Yamaguchi.

Tsukishima is Joe’s Broken Heart.

***

You wake up at Tokyo International.

Tsukishima is looking for Kuroo, in every town he can. Kuroo is gone. He’s one step ahead, every time he goes anywhere. Tsukishima chases rumors of new fight clubs, new chapters of Project Mayhem. Everywhere he goes, Kuroo has already been.

People used to ask him, do you know Kuroo Tetsurou?

Now it’s Tsukishima asking. Have you seen Kuroo Tetsurou?

People wink at him. They say no, they’ve never met him.

Everywhere Tsukishima goes, he gets the feeling Kuroo’s already been. Everywhere he goes, people call him _sir_.

Tsukishima calls Yamaguchi from a hotel room in Osaka, and asks if they’ve ever done it.

“What?” Yamaguchi says.

Slept together. Have we slept together.

“What?!”

Have we ever had sex?

“Fuck! You’re terrible!”

Well, have we?

“You’re an asshole.”

Have we had sex?

“Die!”

Is that a yes? Or a no?

“I knew you would do this,” Yamaguchi says. “You love me, then you hate me. You save my life, then you ignore me.”

Save your life?

Kuroo saved Yamaguchi’s life. Back with the Xanax. Not Tsukishima. Kuroo.

“That night,” Yamaguchi says. “We had sex. I said I wanted to have your abortion.”

Tsukishima asks what his own name is.

“Kuroo Tetsurou,” Yamaguchi says. “Your name is Kuroo fucking Tetsurou, and you live on Paper Street with all your scum of the earth disciples.”

Tsukishima says he has to go. He has to sleep. Goodbye, Yamaguchi, goodnight, goodnight.

***

“You broke your promise,” Kuroo is saying. “You talked about me to other people. Three times you promised.”

“The first rule is you don’t talk about fight club,” Kuroo says.

The fight club in Tokyo is going to be shut down. The police commissioner is onto them. They’ll have to disband it. Kuroo says it won’t be necessary, that the police commissioner is taken care of. Tsukishima asks what Kuroo did about that.

“What _we_ did,” Kuroo says. “There’s no ‘you’ and ‘me,’ not anymore. You should know that.”

They held an Assault Committee meeting. That’s what they did. They jumped him, when he was walking his dog, held him down and threatened to cut his balls off and send them to the press. It did the trick. It took six minutes. No one will be any the wiser. Except the police commissioner, of course.

“I said if you talked about me behind my back, you’d never see me again,” Kuroo says. Kuroo kisses the scar of his lips on the back of Tsukishima’s hand. “We’re not two separate people. When you’re awake, you can pretend to be whoever you want, call yourself whatever you want. But when you’re asleep, it’s me. I take over.”

It doesn’t make sense. They fought, that first night. Kuroo’s fist in Tsukishima’s face.

“You weren’t fighting me,” Kuroo says. “You were fighting all that stuff in your life you hate. You said it yourself.”

What about Yamaguchi?

“Yamaguchi loves you.”

Yamaguchi loves _you_.

“He doesn’t know the difference between you and me. You never gave your real name at those support groups, remember? For all he knows, Kuroo Tetsurou _is_ your real name.”

Now that Tsukishima knows, will Kuroo disappear?

“No,” Kuroo says. “I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want me. I’ll keep living your life while you’re asleep. But you’d better not fuck with that.”

This is crazy. Kuroo is a hallucination. Just something Tsukishima made up.

“Shut up,” Kuroo says. “For all you know, you’re _my_ hallucination.”

This is a dream. Tsukishima will wake up, and it won’t be real.

“Wake up, then.”

***

His name is Azumane Asahi. He’s thirty-four, he’ll be thirty-four forever.

He was on a regulation assignment for Project Mayhem. It went wrong. The cops shot him, one through the heart and another through the head. His name is Azumane Asahi, and he’s dead now, because of Project Mayhem.

You want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. That’s what Kuroo would say.

“His name is Azumane Asahi!” Tsukishima had yelled. “And he’s dead now, because of you!”

They’d echoed it back, those men crowding the house on Paper Street. His name is Azumane Asahi.

Azumane Asahi.

Azumane Asahi.

Azumane Asahi.

He’s dead, Tsukishima says. It’s not funny anymore. The game is over. They keep saying his name, over and over and over and over, until Tsukishima bolts from the house.

***

Tsukishima apologizes to Yamaguchi. Tells him he’s sorry, for being so hot and cold. It’s just that, well, he’s not himself all the time. It must seem like there’s two of him.

“That’s a fair observation,” Yamaguchi says, voice bitter.

***

You always kill the one you love. It goes both ways.

“One minute.”

Kuroo’s gun in Tsukishima’s mouth. Kuroo stands over him, the city sparkles below.

Tsukishima wishes he would just do it already.

Pull the trigger. End it all. It’s over anyway. Maybe they won’t really die, maybe they’ll be a legend, passed down through history. Heroes don’t die.

Kill me, kill me, kill me.

The buildings around them will crumble soon, the homemade dynamite with all that nitroglycerin from all that soap, it’s going to destroy these buildings and everything around it.

Tsukishima doesn’t want to die.

The gun barrel between his lips, Tsukishima shuts his eyes. It’s in Kuroo’s hand, that gun. But it shouldn’t be.

“There’s no ‘you’ and ‘me,’ remember?”

The gun is in Tsukishima’s hand. The gun is in Tsukishima’s hand, but Kuroo is still there.

He loves Kuroo. They were best friends. They were the same person. He wants Kuroo gone.

Kill me, kill him, it makes no difference.

“You can’t stop it, you know,” Kuroo says.

He knows. Tsukishima can’t stop the buildings blowing up, but he can stop Kuroo.

Kill me.

Tsukishima pulls the trigger.

***

Everything is white on white on white.

He thinks this is probably heaven. Not that he deserves it. Angels in white coats, angels not in white coats. Angels with bruised faces who call him _sir_.

He had to have died. Of course, he’d pulled the trigger. Kuroo was gone. Tsukishima should be, too. Heaven looks an awful lot like a hospital.

Yamaguchi comes once. Sits by his bed and says things to him, things he doesn’t remember now. There’s no room in his head.

Angels with bruised faces call him _sir_ and wink and say everything is going according to plan. You’re a legend, sir. You’re a legend, Kuroo Tetsurou.


End file.
